


fools by heavenly compulsion

by deadpoetsam



Category: If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio, The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Based of If We Were Villains / If We Were Villains AU, College AU, Dot is different from canon for plot reasons, F/F, Goodfoe, Island never happened, Murder, So much angst, Swearing, TW: Blood, TW: Drugs, TW: Suicide, Theatre students, Wordcount: Over 100.000, be ready to cry, leah's POV, leatin, like so slow it isn't even burning yet, lots of shakespeare, slowburn, they all are to a certain extent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29984577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadpoetsam/pseuds/deadpoetsam
Summary: After being released from prison, Leah Rilke tells what really happened that fateful fourth year at Dellecher.Or, in 1997, there are 7 seven theatre students who always play their archetype (villain, hero, king), however, when the teachers change the casting, a good-natured rivalry turns ugly, and the plays spill dangerously over into real life.
Relationships: Dot Campbell/Leah Rilke, Dot Campbell/Linh Bach, Fatin Jadmani/Leah Rilke, Shelby Goodkind/Fatin Jadmani, Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	1. Prologue

**Act one**

Prologue

I sit with my wrists cuffed to the table and I think,  _ But that I am forbid / To tell the secrets of my prison-house, / I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul. _ The guard stands by the door, watching me like he’s waiting for something to happen.

Enter Dean Young. He is a graying man now, almost fifty. It’s a surprise, every few weeks, to see how much he’s aged—and he’s aged a little more, every few weeks, for ten years. He sits across from me, folds his hands, and says, “Leah.”

“Dean.”

“Heard the parole hearing went your way. Congratulations.”

“I’d thank you if I thought you meant it.”

“You know I don’t think you belong in here.”

“That doesn’t mean you think I’m innocent.”

“No.” He sighs, checks his watch—the same one he’s worn since we met—as if I’m boring him.

“So why are you here?” I ask. “Same fortnightly reason?”

His eyebrows make a flat black line. “You would say fucking ‘fortnight.’”

“You can take the girl out of the theatre, but you can’t take the theatre out of the girl.”

He shakes his head, simultaneously amused and annoyed.

“Well?” I say.

“Well what?”

“ _ The gallows does well. But how does it well? It does well to those that do ill _ ,” I reply, determined to deserve his annoyance. “Why are you here? You should know by now I’m not going to tell you anything.”

“Actually,” he says, “this time I think I might be able to change your mind.”

I sit up straighter in my chair. “How?”

“I’m leaving the force. Sold out, took a job in private security. Got my kids’ education to think about.”

For a moment I simply stare at him. Young, I always imagined, would have to be put down like a savage old dog before he’d leave the chief’s office.

“How’s that supposed to convince me?” I ask.

“Anything you say will be strictly off the record.”

“Then why even bother?”

He sighs again and all the lines on his face deepen. “Leah, I don’t care about giving out punishment, not anymore. Someone served the time, and we rarely get that much satisfaction in our line of work. But I don’t want to hang up my hat and waste the rest of my days wondering what really happened ten years ago.”

I say nothing at first. I like the idea but don’t trust it. I glance around at the grim cinder blocks, the tiny black video cameras that peer down from every corner, the guard with his jutting underbite. I close my eyes, inhale deeply, and imagine the freshness of Illinois springtime, what it will be like to step outside after gasping on stale prison air for a third of my life.

When I exhale I open my eyes and Young is watching me closely.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m getting out of here either way. I don’t want to risk coming back. Seems safer to let sleeping dogs lie.”

His fingers drum restlessly on the table. “Tell me something,” he says. “Do you ever lie in your cell, staring up at the ceiling, wondering how you wound up in here, and you can’t sleep because you can’t stop thinking about that day?”

“Every night,” I say, without sarcasm. “But here’s the difference, Dean. For you it was just one day, then business as usual. For us it was one day, and every single day that came after.” I lean forward on my elbows, so my face is only a few inches from his, so he hears every word when I lower my voice. “It must eat you alive, not knowing. Not knowing who, not knowing how, not knowing why. But you didn’t know  _ her _ .”

He wears a strange, queasy expression now as if I’ve become unspeakably ugly and awful to look at. “You’ve kept your secrets all this time,” he says. “It would drive anyone else crazy. Why do it?”

“I wanted to.”

“Do you still?”

My heart feels heavy in my chest. Secrets carry weight, like lead.

I lean back. The guard watches impassively as if we’re two strangers talking in another language, our conversation distant and insignificant. I think of the others. Once upon a time,  _ us _ . We did wicked things, but they were necessary, too—or so it seemed. Looking back, years later, I’m not so sure they were, and now I wonder: Could I explain it all to Young, the little twists and turns and final  _ exodos _ ? I study his blank open face, the brown eyes winged now by crow’s-feet, but dark and clear as they have always been.

“All right,” I say. “I’ll tell you a story. But you have to understand a few things.”

Young is motionless. “I’m listening.”

“First, I’ll start talking after I get out of here, not before. Second, this can’t come back to me or anyone else—no double jeopardy. And last, it’s not an apology.”

I wait for some response from him, a nod or a word, but he only blinks at me, silent and stoic as a sphinx.

“Well, Dean?” I say. “Can you live with that?”

He gives me a cold sliver of a smile. “Yes, I think I can.”


	2. Scene One

_Scene 1_

The time: September 1997, my fourth and final year at Dellecher Classical Conservatory. The place: Broadwater, Illinois, a small town of almost no consequence. It had been a warm autumn so far.

Enter the players. There were seven of us then, seven bright young things with wide precious futures ahead of us, though we saw no farther than the books in front of our faces. We were always surrounded by books and words and poetry, all the fierce passions of the world bound in leather and vellum. (I blame this in part for what happened.) The Castle library was an airy octagonal room, walled with bookshelves, crowded with sumptuous old furniture, and kept drowsily warm by a monumental fireplace that burned almost constantly, regardless of the temperature outside. The clock on the mantel struck twelve, and we stirred, one by one, like seven statues coming to life.

“’ _ Tis now dead midnight, _ ” Linh said. She sat in the largest armchair like it was a throne, legs outstretched, feet propped up on the grate. Three years of playing kings and conquerors had taught her to sit that way in every chair, onstage or off-. “ _ And by eight o’clock tomorrow we must be made immortal. _ ” She closed her book with a snap.

Dot, sprawled like a dog on one end of the sofa (while I curled like a cat on the other), toyed with one strand of her hair as she asked, “Where are you going?”

Linh: “ _ Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed— _ ”

Nora: “Oh please spare us.”

Linh: “Early morning and all that.”

Toni: “She says, as if she’s fucking concerned.”

Shelby, sitting cross-legged on a cushion by the fire and oblivious to (or perhaps ignoring) the others’ bickering, said, “Have y'all picked your pieces? I can’t decide.”

Me: “What about Isabella? Your Isabella’s excellent.”

Dot: “Measure’s a comedy, you idiot. We’re auditioning for Caesar.”

“I don’t know why we even bother auditioning at all,” Toni—slumped over the table, wallowing in the darkness at the back of the room—reached for the bottle of Scotch at her elbow. She refilled her glass, took one huge gulp, and grimaced at the rest of us. “I could cast the whole fucking thing right now.”

“How?” I asked. “I never know where I’ll end up.”

“That’s because they always cast you last,” Linh said, “as whatever happens to be left over.”

“Tsk-tsk,” Dot said. “Are we Linh tonight or are we Dick?”

“Ignore her, Leah,” Fatin said. She sat by herself in the farthest corner, loath to look up from her notebook. She had always been the most serious student in our year, which (probably) explained why she was also the best actor and (certainly) why no one resented her for it.

“There.” Toni had unfolded a wad of ten-dollar bills from her pocket and was counting them out on the table. “That’s fifty dollars.”

“For what?” Dot said. “You want a lap dance?”

“Why, are you practicing for after graduation?”

“Bite me.”

“Ask nicely.”

“Fifty dollars for what?” I said, keen to interrupt. I could see the look on Shelby’s face. Dot and Toni had by far the foulest mouths among the seven of us, and took a perverse kind of pride in out-cussing each other. If we let them, they’d go at it all night.

Toni tapped the stack of tens with one long finger. “I bet fifty dollars I can call the cast list right now and not be wrong.”

Five of us exchanged curious glances; Shelby was still frowning into the fireplace, but turned towards Toni, a frown on her face. “Seriously?”

“All right, let’s hear it,” Nora said, with a wan little sigh, as though her curiosity had gotten the better of her.

Toni pushed her unruly long black curls back from her face and said, “Well, obviously Linh will be Caesar.”

“Because we all secretly want to kill her?” Fatin asked.

Linh arched one dark eyebrow. “ _ Et tu, Bruté? _ ”

“ _ Sic semper tyrannis _ ,” Fatin said, and drew the tip of her pen across her throat like a dagger.  _ Thus always to tyrants. _

Toni gestured from one of them to the other. “Precisely,” she said. “Fatin will be Brutus because she’s always the good guy, and I’ll be Cassius because I’m always the bad guy. Shelby will be Portia, Dot will be Calpurnia, and Nor, you’ll end up wearing a wig again,”

More difficult to cast than Dot (the femme fatale) or Shelby (the ingénue), Nora was often obliged to play a male. And because Fatin, Toni, Linh and me volunteered to play the males, we got the bigger roles to make it fair. “Kill me,” she said.

“Wait,” I said, effectively proving Linh’s hypothesis that I was also a permanent leftover in the casting process, “where does that leave me?”

Toni studied me with narrowed eyes, running her tongue across her teeth. “Probably as Octavius,” she decided. “They won’t make you Antony—no offense, but you’re just not  _ conspicuous _ enough. It’ll be that insufferable third-year, what’s her name?”

Fatin: “Linh the Second?”

Lihn: “Hilarious. No, Rachel Reid, Nora’s twin”

“Spectacular.” I looked down at the text of  _ Pericles _ I was scanning, for what felt like the hundredth time. Only half as talented as any of the rest of them, I seemed doomed to always play supporting roles in someone else’s story. Far too many times I had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around.

Toni: “Oh shit, I forgot she’s your sister, sorry Nora.” 

Nora shrugged, “It’s okay, she can be insufferable, Linh the Second isn’t far off.” 

Linh: “How nice of you.”

Toni: “Alright, fifty bucks, on that exact casting. Any takers?”

Dot: “No.”

Toni: “Why not?”

Nora: “Because that’s precisely what’ll happen.”

Linh chuckled and climbed out of her chair. “One can only hope.” She started toward the door and leaned over to pinch Fatin’s cheek on her way out. “ _ Goodnight, sweet prince— _ ”

Fatin smacked Linh’s hand away with her notebook, then made a show of disappearing behind it again. Dot echoed Lihn’s laugh and said, “ _ Thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy! _ ”

“ _ A plague o’ both your houses _ ,” Fatin muttered.

Dot stretched with a small groan and pushed herself off the couch.

“Coming to bed?” Linh asked.

“Yeah. Toni’s made all this work seem fucking useless.” She left her books scattered on the low table in front of the fire, her empty wineglass with them. “Goodnight,” she said, to the room at large. They disappeared down the hall together.

I rubbed my eyes, which were beginning to burn from the effort of reading for hours on end. Shelby tossed her book backward over her head, and I startled as it landed beside me on the couch.

Shelby: “To hell with it.”

Toni: “That’s the spirit.”

Shelby: “I’ll just do Isabella.”

Nora: “Just go to bed.”

Shelby stood slowly, blinking the vestigial light of the fire out of her eyes. “I’ll probably lie awake all night reciting lines,” she said.

“Want to come out for a smoke?” Toni had finished her whiskey (again) and was rolling a spliff on the table. “Might help you relax.”

“No, thank you,” she said, drifting out into the hall. “Goodnight.”

“Suit yourself.” Toni pushed her chair back, spliff poking out of one corner of her mouth. “Leah?”

“If I help you smoke that I’ll wake up with no voice tomorrow.”

“Nor?”

She nudged her glasses up into her hair and coughed softly, testing her throat. “God, you’re a terrible influence,” she said. “Fine.”

Toni nodded, already halfway out of the room, hands buried deep in her pockets. I watched them go, a little jealously, then slumped down against the arm of the couch. I struggled to focus on my text, which was so aggressively annotated that it was barely readable anymore.

PERICLES:  _ Antioch, farewell! for wisdom sees those men _

_ Blush not in actions blacker than the night _

_ Will ’schew no course to keep them from the light. _

_ One sin, I know, another doth provoke; _

_ Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke. _

I murmured the last two lines under my breath. I knew them by heart, had known them for months, but the fear that I would forget a word or phrase halfway through my audition gnawed at me anyway. I glanced across the room at Fatin and said, “Do you ever wonder if Shakespeare knew these speeches half as well as we do?”

She withdrew from whatever verse she was reading, looked up while smiling, and said, “Constantly.”

I cracked a smile. “Well, I give up. I’m not actually getting anything done.”

She checked her golden watch. “No, I don’t think I am either.”

I heaved myself off the sofa and followed Fatin up the spiral stairs to the bedroom we shared—which was directly over the library, the highest of three rooms in a little stone column commonly referred to as the Tower. It had once been used only as an attic, but the cobwebs and clutter had been cleared away to make room for more students in the late seventies. Twenty years later it housed Fatin and me, two beds with blue Dellecher bedspreads, two monstrous old wardrobes, and a pair of mismatched bookshelves too ugly for the library.

“Do you think it’ll fall out how Toni says?” I asked.

Fatin pulled her shirt off, mussing her short black hair in the process. “If you ask me, it’s too predictable.”

“When have they ever surprised us?”

“Daniel surprises me all the time,” she said. “But Gretchen will have the final say, she always does.”

“If it were up to her, Linh would play all of the men and half the women.”

“Which would leave Dot playing the other half.” She pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes. “When do you read tomorrow?”

“Right after Linh. Nora’s after me.”

“And I’m after her. God, I feel bad for her.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a miracle she hasn’t dropped out.”

Fatin frowned thoughtfully as she wriggled out of her jeans. “Well, she’s a bit more resilient than the rest of us. Maybe that’s why Gretchen torments her.”

“Just because she can take it?” I said, discarding my own clothes in a pile on the floor. “That’s cruel.”

She shrugged. “That’s Gretchen.”

“If I had my way, I’d turn it all upside down,” I said. “Make Toni Caesar and have Linh play Cassius instead.”

She folded her comforter back and asked, “Am I still Brutus?”

“No.” I tossed a sock at her, she pouted. “You’re Antony. For once I get to be the lead.”

“Leah, your time will come to be the tragic hero. Just wait for spring.”

I glanced up from the drawer I was pawing through. “Has Daniel been telling you secrets again?”

She lay down and folded her hands behind her head. “He may have mentioned Troilus and Cressida. He has this amazing idea to do it as a battle of the sexes. All the Trojans men, all the Greeks women.”

“That’s insane.”

“Why? That play is as much about sex as it is about war,” she says. “Gretchen will want Linh to be Hector, obviously, but that makes you Troilus.”

“Why the hell wouldn’t you be Troilus?”

She shifted, arched her back. “I might have mentioned that I’d like to have a little more variety on my résumé.”

I stared at her, unsure if I should be insulted.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that,” she said, her voice soft. ”He agreed we all need to break out of our boxes. I’m tired of playing fucking fools in love like Troilus, and I think you’re pretty tired of always playing the loyal sidekick, I sure as hell would be.”

I flopped on my bed on my back. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” For a moment I let my thoughts wander, and then I breathed out a laugh. Fatin was reaching over to turn out the light, but stopped mid-movement.

“Something funny?” Fatin asked, laying back down on her back, the light was still on. 

“You’ll have to be Cressida,” I told her with a smirk, “You’re the only one of us pretty enough.”

She chuckled, “I’m pretty? Seriously, Leah, if any of us have to play Cressida, it’ll be you.”

I snorted, “Seriously?” 

“I mean, yeah. You’re pretty, I’m handsome. Big difference” 

“I say one nice thing and your ego is immediately as big as Linh’s.”

She turned her head to stare at me, looking scandalized. “Leah! Being handsome isn't necessarily better than being pretty, it's just a different thing, you know? Also, I’m just quoting Dorothy.”

I laughed. She reached for the light again, this time actually turning it off. We lay in silence for a while, my mind running wild. I couldn’t sleep yet, so might I as well talk to my favorite insomniac (who often pretended she was asleep, only to start pacing around the room ten minutes later)

“You know, Dot once said I was handsome.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, and you still remember it to this day? Savoring the memory of the hot girl noticing you?” She said, teasing me. 

“Oh shut up, I didn't mean it like that,” I tried to find the words to describe my thoughts, “I’m just still wondering, why did you say that I’m pretty? I mean, look, I’m taller than all of you and the only one more masculine than me is Linh. If I would be classified as attractive in any way, it would be handsome, so how can I be pretty, let alone the prettiest?” 

Fatin scoffed, “First off, Jeez Leah, learn to take a compliment, I don’t give those away easily, you know? Secondly, height has nothing to do with being pretty. Thirdly, I said you're pretty, therefore you are perceived as pretty, which by definition makes you pretty” 

“Well, my handsome Disney prince, I also called you pretty, which by definition makes you pretty too.” I said, a smug smile plastered on my face. 

Fatin groaned, “Why are you like this, Leah? Can’t you just let me be a Disney prince?”

I laughed again. “Fatin, if I can be both handsome and pretty, so can you.”

“Oh, really? I find that hard to believe.”

“Have you looked in a mirror recently?”

She laughed loudly. “Leah, if you keep giving me compliments I might fall in love with you, be careful.”

I snorted. “No you’re right, we can’t do that to Shelby. Being friends with two lesbian couples will be too much to handle for our favorite religious freak.”

“She’s come a long way,” Fatin says, “I’m sure she can manage it,”

“Are you trying to convince me to date you?”

“I’m just saying, Shelby isn’t as bad as she used to be, she’s really changed.”

“Yeah, I know.” 

We lay there talking and laughing in the dark until we dropped off to sleep, and slept deeply, with no way of knowing that the curtain was about to rise on a drama of our own invention.


	3. Scene two

_ Scene 2 _

Dellecher Classical Conservatory occupied twenty or so acres of land on the eastern edge of Broadwater, and the borders of the two so often overlapped that it was difficult to tell where campus ended and the town began. The first-years were housed in a cluster of brick buildings in town, while the second-and third-years were crowded together at the Hall, and the handful of fourth-years were tucked away in odd isolated corners of campus or left to fend for themselves. We, the fourth-year theatre students, lived on the far side of the lake in what was whimsically called the Castle (not really a castle, but a small stone building that happened to have one turret, originally the groundskeepers’ quarters).

Dellecher Hall, a sprawling red-brick mansion, looked down a steep hill to the dark flat water of the lake. Dormitories and the ballroom were on the fourth and fifth floors, classrooms and offices on the second and third, while the ground floor was divided into refectory, music hall, library, and conservatory. A chapel jutted off the west end of the building, and sometime in the 1960s, the Archibald Dellecher Fine Arts Building (generally referred to as the FAB, for more than one reason) was erected on the east side of the Hall, a small courtyard and honeycomb of corbeled walkways wedged between them. The FAB was home to the Archibald Dellecher Theatre and the rehearsal hall and, ergo, was where we spent most of our time. At eight in the morning on the first day of classes, it was exceptionally quiet.

Linh and I walked from the Castle together, though I wasn’t due to audition for another half hour.

“How do you feel?” she asked, as we climbed the steep hill to the lawn.

“Nervous, like I always am.” The number of auditions under my belt didn’t matter; the anxiety never really left me.

“No need to be,” she said. “You’re never as dreadful as you think you are. Just don’t shift your weight too much. You’re most interesting when you stand still.”

I frowned at her. “How do you mean?”

“I mean when you forget you’re onstage and forget to be nervous. You really listen to other actors, really hear the words like it’s the first time you’ve heard them. It’s wonderful to work with and marvellous to watch.” She shook her head at the look of consternation on my face. “I shouldn’t have told you. Don’t get self-conscious.” She clapped her hand on my shoulder, and I was so distracted I pitched forward, my fingertips brushing the dewy grass. Linh’s laugh echoed in the morning air, and she grabbed my arm to help me find my balance. “See?” she said. “Keep your feet planted and you’ll be fine.”

“You suck,” I said, but with a grudging smirk. (Linh had that effect on people.)

As soon as we reached the FAB, she gave me another cheery smack on the back and disappeared into the rehearsal hall. I paced back and forth along the crossover, puzzling over what she had said and repeating  _ Pericles _ to myself like I was saying a string of Hail Marys.

Our first semester auditions determined which parts we would play in our fall production. That year, Julius Caesar. Tragedies and histories were reserved for the fourth-years, while the third-years were relegated to romance and comedy and all the bit parts were played by the second-years. First-years were left to work backstage, slog through general education, and wonder what the hell they’d gotten themselves into. (Each year, students whose performance was deemed unsatisfactory were cut from the program—often as many as half. To survive until the fourth year was proof of either talent or dumb luck. In my case, the latter.) Class photos from the past fifty years hung in two neat rows along the wall in the crossover. Ours was the last and certainly the sexiest, a publicity photo from the previous year’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We looked younger.

It was Daniel’s idea to do Midsummer as a pyjama party. Fatin and I (Lysander and Demetrius, respectively) wore striped boxers and white undershirts and stood glaring at each other, with Shelby (Hermia, in a short pink nightgown) trapped between us. Nora stood on my left in Helena’s longer blue nightdress, clutching the pillow she and Shelby had walloped each other with, in Act III. In the middle of the photo, Toni and Dot were wrapped around each other like a pair of snakes—Toni a sinister and seductive Oberon in a slinky silk bathrobe, Dot a sensual Titania in revealing black lace. But Linh was the most arresting, standing among the other rude mechanicals in clownish flannel pyjamas, enormous donkey ears protruding from her thick black hair. Her Nick Bottom was aggressive, unpredictable, and totally deranged. She terrorized the fairies, tormented the other players, scared the hell out of the audience, and—as always—stole the show.

The seven of us had survived three yearly “purges'' because we were each somehow indispensable to the playing company. We were unique, the group of the fourth year had never consisted only of girls before. But, cross-dressing was a common occurrence in Shakespearian Theatre, so it hardly mattered. The ones who were almost always cast as male did often prefer short hair as a consequence (wigs truly were a disaster), hence Fatin and me cutting our hair short (Fatin in our second year, me in our third year). Linh already had short hair, to begin with. Toni was the exception, she chose to keep her long dark hair (and refused to wear a wig), only adding to the dark gloom that hung around her like mist. 

Over the course of four years, we had transformed from an assortment of players to a small, meticulously trained dramatic troupe. Some of our theatrical assets were obvious: Linh was pure power, made from concrete with sharp black eyes and a thrilling voice that flattened every other sound in a room. She played warlords and tyrants and anyone else the audience needed to be impressed by or afraid of.

Dot was confident and was perfect for roles that involved seduction. Her lack of interest in what other people thought proved to be perfect for being flirtatious on stage (and eventually through her years at Dellecher, she was the same way off-stage. We all became our characters, one way or the other). But there was something merciless about her—you were forced to watch her when she moved, no matter what else was happening, and whether you wanted to or not. 

Shelby was the ingénue, the girl next door, beautiful with blonde curls and innocent baby-blue eyes. Her excitement was endearing and her genuine positivity never failed to make us smile (although Toni denied it). Her “Jesus Saves'' talks had made things tense in the first year, but she had stopped lecturing us (for which most credits went to Linh) and became a bit more loosened up throughout our third year, which we were all grateful for. 

And then you had Toni, our resident villain, She was short, thin and wiry with the feral energy of wolves, She had long dark curls that were often wild and messy, olive-skin and sharp canine teeth that made her look like a vampire when she smiled. The way she showed insanity and anger on the stage was unmatched, and she had quite a few admirers. The darkness of playing villains for years did hang around her, but in the right circumstances, she showed a softer side (she denied this fiercely). 

Nora and I were more difficult to categorize. Her dark skin, brown curls (with often her glasses hanging in them) and her unique smile. There was something cool and chameleonic about Nora that made her equally convincing as Horatio or Emilia. She had a twin sister, Rachel, but she rarely spoke about her. She was mysterious, and we all probably knew the least about her. Not out of disinterest, we had made many attempts to get her to share more about herself, but she managed to only give the smallest bits and pieces. We had all accepted her mystery over time. 

I, on the other hand, was average in almost every imaginable way: not especially beautiful or handsome, not especially interesting, not especially talented, not especially good at anything but just good enough at everything that I could pick up whatever slack the others left. I was convinced I had survived the third-year purge because Fatin would have been moody and sullen without me.

Fate had dealt us a good hand in our first year when she and I found ourselves squashed together in a tiny room on the top floor of the dormitories. When I’d first opened our door, she looked up from the bag she was unpacking, held out her hand, and said, “ _ Here comes Miss Leah! You are well met, _ I hope.” She was the sort of actor everyone fell in love with as soon as she stepped on stage, and I was no exception. Even in our early days at Dellecher, I was protective and even possessive of her when other friends came too close and threatened to take my place as “best”—an event as rare as a meteor shower. Some people saw me as Gretchen always cast me: simply the loyal sidekick. Fatin was so quintessentially a hero that this didn’t bother me. She was the most handsome of us (Dot once compared her to a Disney prince), but more charming than that was her childlike depth of feeling, onstage and off-. For three years I enjoyed the overflow of her popularity and admired her intensely, without jealousy, even though she was Daniel’s obvious favourite in much the same way that Linh was Gretchen’s. Of course, Fatin did not have Linh’s ego or temper and was liked by everyone, while Linh was hated and loved with equal ferocity.

It was customary for us to watch whichever audition followed our own (performing without an audience was compensation for performing first), and I paced restlessly over the crossover, wishing that Fatin could have been my audience. Even when she didn’t mean to be, Linh was an intimidating spectator. I could hear her voice from the rehearsal hall, vibrating off the walls.

Linh: “ _ Therefore take heed how you impawn our person, _

_ How you awake our sleeping sword of war: _

_ We charge you, in the name of God, take heed. _

_ For never two such kingdoms did contend _

_ Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops _

_ Are every one a woe, a sore complaint, _

_ ’Gainst him whose wrongs give edge unto the swords _

_ That make such waste in brief mortality. _ ”

I’d seen her do the same speech twice before, but that made it no less impressive.

At precisely half-past eight, the door to the rehearsal hall creaked open. Daniel’s familiar face appeared in the gap. “Leah? We’re ready for you now.”

“Great.” My pulse quickened—a flutter, like little bird wings trapped between my lungs.

Although I was tall, I felt small walking into the rehearsal hall, but then again, I always did. It was a cavernous room, with a high vaulted ceiling and long windows that gazed out on the grounds. Blue velvet curtains hung on either side of them, hems gathered in dusty piles on the hardwood floor. My voice echoed as I said, “Good morning, Gretchen.”

The blonde, stick figure woman behind the casting table glanced up at me, her presence in the room disproportionately enormous. Bold red lipstick and a black and white suit, yet she wore heels I doubt even Dot would be able to walk in. She wiggled her fingers in greeting, and the bracelets on her wrist rattled. Linh sat in the chair to the left of the table, arms folded, watching me with a comfortable smile. I was not Leading material and therefore didn’t qualify as competition. I flashed her a grin and then tried to ignore her.

“Leah,” Gretchen said. “Lovely to see you. Have you lost weight?”

“Gained it, actually,” I said, my face going warm. When I left for summer break she had advised me to “bulk up.” I spent hours at the gym every day of June, July, and August, hoping to somehow impress her.

“Hm,” she said, gaze descending slowly from the top of my head to my feet with the cold scrutiny of a slave trader at auction. “Well. Shall we get started?”

“Sure.” Remembering Linh’s advice, I straightened my feet on the floor and resolved not to move without reason.

Daniel eased back into his seat beside Gretchen, removed his glasses, and wiped the lenses on the hem of his shirt. “What do you have for us today?” he asked.

“Pericles,” I said. He had suggested it, the previous term.

He gave me a small, conspiratorial nod. “Perfect. Whenever you’re ready.”


	4. Scene three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two updates in one day, because this chapter is really short.

_ Scene 3 _

We spent the rest of the day at the bar—a dimly lit, wood-panelled hole-in-the-wall where the staff knew most Dellecher students by name, accepted as many fake IDs as real ones, and didn’t seem to find it odd that some of us had been twenty-one for three years. The fourth-years had finished auditioning by noon, but Daniel and Gretchen had forty-two other students to see, and—allowing for lunch and dinner breaks and deliberation—the cast lists probably wouldn’t be posted until midnight. Six of us sat in our usual booth at the Bore’s Head (as clever a joke as Broadwater was capable of), collecting empty glasses on the table. We all drank beer except Toni, who drank Scotch and drank it neat.

It was Shelby’s turn to wait at the FAB for the cast list to go up. The rest of us had taken ours already, and if she reappeared empty-handed it would be back to the beginning of the rotation. The sun had set hours before, but we weren’t finished dissecting our auditions.

“I fucked it up completely,” Dot said, for what might have been the tenth time. “I said ‘dismember’ instead of ‘dissemble,’ like an absolute idiot.”

“In the context of that speech it hardly matters,” Toni said, wearily. “Gretchen probably didn’t notice and Daniel probably didn’t care.”

Before Dot could reply, Shelby burst in from outside, a single sheet of paper clutched in her hand. “It’s up!” she said with her signature excited smile, and we all leapt to our feet. Linh guided her to the table, sat her down, and snatched the list. Shelby had already seen it and suffered herself to be shunted into a corner while the rest of us bent over the table. After a few moments of silent, furious reading, Toni sprang up again.

“What did I tell you?” She slapped the list, pointed at Shelby, and shouted, “Barkeep, let me buy this lady a drink!”

Shelby definitely blushed. Throughout our years at Dellecher, Toni’s loud and obnoxious flirting with her had changed from malicious intent to something that might resemble genuine flirting. 

“Sit down, Toni, you preposterous ass,” Nora said, grabbing her elbow to pull her back into the booth. “You weren’t all right!”

“I was so.”

“No, Leah’s playing Octavius, but she’s also playing Casca.”

“Am I?” I had stopped reading once I saw the line drawn between my name and Octavius’s and leaned in for a second look.

“Yeah, and I’ve got three—Decius Brutus, Lucilius, and Titinius.” She offered a stoic smile to me, her fellow persona non grata.

“Why would they do that?” Dot asked, after taking a chug of her beer, “They’ve got plenty of second-years to use.”

“But the third-years are doing Shrew,” Shelby said. “They’ll need all the bodies they can get.”

“Rachel’s going to be a busy girl,” Fatin remarked. “Look, they’ve got her playing Antony and Tranio.”

“They did the same thing to me last year,” Linh said as if we didn’t all already know. “Nick Bottom with you all and the Player King with the fourth-years. I was in rehearsal eight hours a day.”

Sometimes third-years were chosen to take a role in a fourth-year cast that couldn’t be trusted to a second-year. It meant classes from eight until three, then rehearsal with one cast until six-thirty and rehearsal with another cast until eleven. Secretly, I didn’t envy Linh or Rachel.

“Not this time,” Toni said, with a wicked little smirk. “You’ll only have rehearsal half the week—you die in Act III.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I said. The rest laughed loudly. 

“ _ How many fond fools serve mad jealousy _ !” Linh declared.

“Oh, shut up,” Shelby said with a smile. “Get us another round and perhaps we’ll put up with you a little while longer.”

She rose from her seat and said, “ _ I would give all my fame for a pot of ale _ !” as she made her way to the bar.

Fatin shook her head and said, “If only.”


	5. Scene four

_ Scene 4 _

We left our things in the Castle and ran wildly through the trees, down the hillside stairs to the edge of the lake. We laughed and shouted at one another, sure we wouldn’t be heard and too tipsy to care if we were. The dock stretched out into the water from the boathouse, where a collection of useless old tools crumbled and rusted. (There hadn’t been a boat kept on the south side of the lake since they turned the Castle into student housing.) We spent many warm nights and some of the cold ones smoking and drinking on the dock, dangling our feet over the water.

Dot got there first. She stopped and draped her arms over her head, a pale stripe of her back visible above her waistband. “ _ How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank _ !” She turned and grabbed both my hands, because I was closest. “ _ Here will we sit and let the sounds of music / Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night / Become the touches of sweet harmony _ .” I pretended to protest as she dragged me to the end of the dock and the others tumbled down the stairs to join us, one by one. 

“Let’s go skinny-dipping!” Dot said, already kicking her shoes off. “I haven’t been swimming all summer.”

“ _ The chariest maid is prodigal enough _ ,” Fatin warned, “ _ if she unmask her beauty to the moon. _ ”

“For God’s sake, Fatin, you’re no fun.” She swatted the backs of my thighs with one of her shoes. “Leah, won’t you come in the water with me?”

“Last time we went skinny-dipping I fell on the dock butt naked and spent the rest of the night facedown on the couch with Toni pulling splinters out of my ass, so no thank you.”

The others laughed exhaustively at my expense, and Linh let out a long wolf whistle.

Dot: “Come on, somebody swim with me!”

Toni: “You can’t keep your clothes on for twenty-four hours, can you?”

Nora: “Maybe if Linh could keep her happy she wouldn’t be such a slut around the rest of us.”

More laughter, more whistling (Dot laughed the loudest). Linh gave Nora a lofty sort of look and said, “ _ The lady doth protest too much, methinks _ .”

She rolled her eyes and sat beside Toni, who was busy crumbling weed into a cigarette paper.

I breathed in and held the sweet woody air in my lungs for as long as I could. A sweltering summer in suburban Ohio had made me impatient to return to Dellecher and the lake. The water was black by night, deep blue-green like jade by day. Dense forest surrounded it on all sides except one, the north shore, where the trees were thinner and a strip of sandy white beach shimmered like diamond dust in the moonlight. On the south bank, we were just far enough away from the firefly lights of the Hall that there was little danger of our being seen and even less of being overheard. At the time, we liked our isolation.

Dot lay back, eyes closed, humming peacefully. Fatin and Shelby sat on the opposite edge of the dock, looking toward the beach. Toni finished rolling her joint, lit it, and handed it to Nora. “Have a hit. We’ve got nothing to do tomorrow,” she said, which wasn’t entirely true. We had our first real day of classes and convocation later in the evening. Nevertheless, she accepted the joint and took a long drag before passing it to me. (We all indulged on special occasions, except Toni, who was at least a little bit stoned all the time).

Linh sighed, a sound of profound satisfaction that rumbled in her chest like a big cat’s purr. “This is going to be a good year,” she said. “I can feel it.”

Shelby: “Could that possibly be because you got the part you wanted?”

Toni: “And half the lines we have to learn?”

Linh: “Seems fair, after last year.”

Me: “I hate you.”

Linh: “ _ Hatred is the sincerest form of flattery _ .”

Fatin: “That’s imitation, fuckface.”

A few of us snickered, still pleasantly buzzed. Our squabbling was good-natured and usually harmless. We had, like seven siblings, spent so much time together that we had seen the best and worst of one another and were unimpressed by either.

“Can y'all believe it’s our last year?” Shelby said when the lull after our laughter had lingered long enough.

“No,” I said. “Seems like just yesterday my dad was shouting at me for throwing my life away.”

Toni snorted. “What was it he said to you?”

“‘You’re going to turn down a scholarship at Case Western and spend the next four years pretending to be something, wasting your intelligence, just to end up poor and starving?’”

“Art school” alone was enough to provoke my suburban practical father, but more often than not Dellecher’s dangerous exclusivity was the cause of raised eyebrows. Why should intelligent, talented students risk forcible ejection from their school at the end of each year and graduate without even a traditional degree to show for their survival? What most people who lived outside the strange sphere of conservatory education didn’t realize was that a Dellecher certificate was like one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets—guaranteed to grant the bearer admission to the elite artistic and philological sodalities that survived outside of academia.

My father, even more rigidly opposed than most, refused to accept my decision to waste my university years. Acting was bad, but something so niche and old-fashioned as Shakespeare (at Dellecher, we didn’t do anything else) was even worse. Eighteen and vulnerable, I’d felt for the first time the extraordinary dread of wanting something desperately and watching it slip through my fingers, so I took the risk of telling him I would go to Dellecher or nowhere. My mother had eventually persuaded him to pay my tuition, after weeks of ultimatums and circular arguments.

“I wish my mother had been so furious,” Toni said. “She still thinks I’m at school in Minnesota.” Toni’s mother had given her up to foster care (in return for a habit of drug-abuse) at an early age and made only the barest efforts to stay in touch. (All she’d deigned to tell her about her father was that the man had no idea Toni existed.) Her tuition was paid by Martha’s family (her best friend, who also goes to Dellecher), who she had moved in with at age 16. 

“My dad’s just disappointed I wasn’t a poet,” Fatin added. Professor Jadmani taught the Romantic poets at Berkeley, and his wife was a poet herself until she suffered a Plath-like breakdown when Fatin was in grade school, caused by finding out her husband was cheating on her (with a former student, scandalizing), but refused to leave him (much to the annoyance of Fatin). Both believed Fatin had a true talent for writing and had pushed her to become a writer or poet her entire youth. Her choice to attend Dellecher came as a surprise to them, to say the least. I’d met them two summers before when I visited Fatin in California and had my suspicions that they were interesting people but disinterested parents confirmed.

“My parents don’t give a damn,” Nora said. “They just want something to boast about.” The Reid’s split their time between Montreal and Manhattan, sold fantastically expensive wristwatches to politicians and celebrities, and treated their daughters more like novelty pets than members of the family. Nora never really talked about them, only bits and parts. We knew most because Rachel wouldn’t shut up about them. 

Dot said nothing. We knew the whole story. How she didn’t know her mom, and how she had taken care of her ill dad in high school until he passed away. She just preferred not to join in in our negative conversations about our families. Her dad had truly cared about her before he passed. He had wanted her to pursue her dreams, and so she did. 

Surprisingly, Shelby said nothing either. In our first year, Shelby had always corrected our badmouthing of our parents, saying it was “disrespectful” and claiming “they mean well”. She had stopped correcting us over time (mainly after Toni had snapped at her), but she always just had to contribute to the conversation by saying something positive about her family. But, this time she stayed eerily quiet, frowning while looking at the lake, and it made me wonder what had happened over the break. 

“ _ A little more than kin, and less than kind _ ,” Toni said. “Jesus, our families are fucking miserable.”

“Well, not all of them,” Linh said as if we didn’t already know her parents were a seasoned actor and a director living in London, who made frequent appearances in the West End theatres. She shrugged. “My parents are thrilled.”

Toni exhaled a stream of smoke and flicked her spliff away. “Lucky you,” she said and shoved Linh off the dock.

She hit the water with a monstrous splash, which sent water crashing over all of us. We all yelped in surprise and threw our arms over our heads. A moment later we were all sopping wet, laughing and applauding Toni, too loud to hear Linh swearing when her head burst through the surface again.

We lingered by the water for another hour before, one by one, we began the slow climb back to the Castle. I was the last person standing on the dock. I didn’t believe in God, but I asked whoever was listening not to let Linh’s prediction jinx us. A good year was all I wanted.


	6. Scene five

_ Scene 5 _

Eight in the morning was far too early for Gretchen.

We sat in a ragged circle, legs folded like storybook Indians, yawning and clutching mugs of coffee from the refectory. Studio Five—Gretchen’s lair, festooned with colourful tapestries and cluttered with scented candles—was on the second floor of the Hall. There was no furniture to speak of, but instead a generous collection of floor pillows, which only increased the temptation to stretch out and sleep.

Gretchen arrived her usual quarter after the hour (“fashionably late,” she always told us), wearing a red suit, gold rings thick as knuckle dusters gleaming on her fingers. She was brighter than the pale morning sun outside and almost painful to look at.

“Good morning, darlings,” she trilled. Toni grunted half a greeting, but nobody else replied. She stopped, standing over us, hands on her bony hips. “Well, this is just shameful. It’s your first day of class—you ought to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.” We stared at her until she flung her hands up and said, “On your feet! Let’s go!”

The next half hour was devoted to a series of painful yoga positions. Gretchen, for a woman in her forties, was disturbingly limber. As the minute hand inched toward the nine, she straightened up from her King Pigeon Pose with an ecstatic sigh that must have made someone besides me uncomfortable.

“Isn’t that better?” she said. Toni grunted at her again. “I’m sure you’ve all missed me over the summer,” she continued, “but we’ll have plenty of time to catch up after convocation, so I’d like to dive right in and let you know that things are going to work a little differently this year.”

For the first time, the class (besides Toni) showed signs of life. We shifted, sat up straighter, and began to really listen.

“So far, you’ve been in the safe zone,” Gretchen said. “And I feel it’s only fair to warn you that those days are no more.”

I looked sideways at Fatin, who frowned. I couldn’t tell if Gretchen was being her usual dramatic self or if she really meant to make a change.

“You know me by now,” she said. “You know how I work. Daniel will coax and cajole you all day long, but I’m a pusher. I’ve pushed you and pushed you, but”—she held up one finger—“never too far.” I didn’t entirely agree. Gretchen’s teaching methods were merciless, and it wasn’t unusual for students to leave her class in tears. (Actors were like oysters, she explained when anyone wanted justification for this emotional brutality. You had to crack their shells and break them open to find the precious pearls inside.) She plowed ahead. “This is your last year and I’m going to push you as far as I have to. I know what you’re capable of, and I’ll be damned if I don’t drag it out of you by the time you leave this place.”

I shared another nervous look, this time with Nora.

Gretchen adjusted her shawl, smoothed her hair, and said, “Now, who can tell me—what is our biggest impediment to good performance?”

“Fear,” Shelby said. It was one of Gretchen’s many mantras: On the stage, you must be fearless.

“Yes. Fear of what?”

“Vulnerability,” Linh said.

“Precisely,” Gretchen said. “We’re only ever playing fifty percent of a character. The rest is us, and we’re afraid to show people who we really are. We’re afraid of looking foolish if we reveal the full force of our emotions. But in Shakespeare’s world, passion is irresistible, not embarrassing. So!” She clapped her hands and the sound made half of us jump. “We banish the fear, beginning today. You can’t do good work if you’re hiding, so we’re going to get all of the ugliness out in the open. Who’s first?”

We sat in surprised silence for a few seconds before Dot said, “I’ll go.”

“Perfect,” Gretchen said. “Stand up.”

I eyed Dot uneasily as she climbed to her feet. She stood in the middle of our little circle, shifting her weight from foot to foot until she found her balance, tucking her hair out of the way behind her ears—her usual method of centering herself. 

“Dorothy,” Gretchen said, smiling up at her. “Our guinea pig. Breathe.”

Dot swayed on the spot, as if at the push and pull of a breeze, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. It was strangely relaxing to watch.

“There,” Gretchen said. “Are you ready?”

Dot nodded and opened her eyes.

“Lovely. Let’s start with something easy. What is your greatest strength as a performer?”

Dot, normally so confident, hesitated.

Gretchen: “Your greatest strength.”

Dot: “I guess—”

Gretchen: “No guessing. What is your greatest strength?”

Dot: “I think—”

Gretchen: “I don’t want to hear what you think, I want to hear what you know. I don’t care if you sound stuck up, I care what you’re good at, and as a performer, you need to be able to tell me. What is your greatest strength?”

“I’m physical!” Dot said. “I feel everything with my whole body and I’m not afraid to use it.”

“You’re not afraid to use it, but you’re afraid to say what you really mean!” Gretchen was nearly shouting. I glanced back and forth between them, alarmed at how quickly things had escalated. “You’re tiptoeing around it because we’re all sitting here staring at you,” Gretchen said. “Now, out with it. Out.”

Dot’s easy confidence was gone, and instead she stood with her legs locked, arms held rigidly at her sides. “I’m confident,” she said. “I’m aware of what people want and know how to use it. I’m not afraid to put on a show and show myself off. That makes me fucking magnetic”

“You’re damn right, it does.” Gretchen leered at her like the Cheshire Cat. “You’re a confident and beautiful girl. It sounds bitchy, but you know what? It’s true. More important than that, it’s honest.” She jabbed one finger at her. “That was honest. Good.”

Nora and Toni both fidgeted, avoiding Dot’s eyes. Shelby stared at Dot, a mix of concern and empathy in her eyes. Linh was looking at her like she wanted to rip Dot’s clothes off on the spot, and I had no idea where to look. She nodded and wanted to sit back down, but Gretchen said, “You’re not done.” Dot froze. “We’ve established your strengths. Now I want to hear about your weaknesses. What are you most afraid of?”

Dot stood glowering at Gretchen, who, to my surprise, didn’t interrupt the silence. The rest of us squirmed on the floor, eyes flicking up at Dot with a mixture of sympathy, admiration, and embarrassment.

“Everyone has a weakness, Dorothy,” Gretchen said. “Even you. The strongest thing you can do is admit it. We’re waiting.”

In the excruciating pause that followed, Dot stood impossibly still, eyes burning. She was so exposed that staring at her seemed invasive, voyeuristic, and I grappled with the impulse to yell at her to just fucking say something.

“I’m afraid,” she said, after what felt like a year, speaking very slowly, “That no one will ever truly see me, you know? That my persona on stage has taken over who I am and that there will be no realness left, that everyone will just see a fake bitch who flirts with everyone,” Her voice faltered away, looking away while saying, “That’s the last thing I want to be seen as” 

Dead silence again. I forced my eyes down, glanced around at the others. Shelby sat with one hand over her mouth. Linh’s expression was softer than I had ever seen it. Nora looked slightly nauseous; Toni looked genuinely emotional. On my right, Fatin peered up at Dot with keen, evaluative interest, as if she were a statue, a sculpture, something shaped a thousand years ago in the likeness of a pagan deity. Her unmasking was harsh, mesmeric, somehow dignified.

In a weird, bewildered way, I understood that this was exactly what Gretchen wanted.

She held Dot’s gaze so long it seemed like time had stopped. Then she exhaled enormously and said, “Good. Sit. There.”

Dot’s knees bent mechanically, and she sat in the centre of the circle, spine straight and stiff as a fence post.

“All right,” Gretchen said. “Let’s talk.”


	7. Scene six

_ Scene 6 _

After an hour of thoroughly interrogating Dot about her insecurities (some questions were truly cruel, and I despised Gretchen for bringing some things up), Gretchen dismissed us, with the promise that everyone else would be a victim to the same ruthless questioning in the next two weeks.

On our way up the stairs to the third floor, second-year art students bustling around us on their way down to the conservatory, Fatin fell in step beside me.

“That was fucking awful,” I whispered to her, my voice rough. Dot walked a few steps ahead of us, Linh’s arm around her shoulders, though she didn’t seem to have noticed it. She moved determinedly forward, avoiding direct eye contact with anyone.

“True story,” Fatin whispered, “but that’s Gretchen.”

“I’m glad we’ll be stuck in the gallery for two hours.”

“Same,” Fatin whispered back with a smile. 

While Gretchen taught the more visceral elements of acting—voice and body, heart over head—Daniel taught the intimate particulars of Shakespeare’s text, everything from meter to early modern history. Because of my bookishness and interest in the theory behind it, I really enjoyed his classes. Fatin did too, she showed it by often being the one to participate, the one to ask the questions no one dared to ask for fear of looking stupid. 

“Let’s go,” Fatin said, quietly, “before Lit steals our table.” (Nora had coined the term in our second year when the two had just fallen in love and were truly dreadful to be around) Dot still looked troubled as we moved past them on the stairs. Whatever Linh had said to make her feel better, it really wasn’t working.

Daniel preferred to conduct fourth-year classes in the gallery, rather than the classroom he was forced to use for the more numerous second- and third-years. It was a narrow, high-ceilinged room that had once stretched the entire length of the third floor but was unceremoniously divided into smaller rooms and studios when the school opened. The Long Gallery became the Short Gallery, barely twenty feet from end to end, walled on two sides with bookshelves and dotted with portraits of long-dead Dellecher cousins and offspring. A love seat and a low-slung sofa faced each other under the elaborate plasterwork ceiling, while a small round table and two chairs basked in the light of the diamond-paned window on the south side of the room. Whenever we had tea with Daniel (which we did twice a month as third-years and daily during class as fourth-years), Fatin and I almost ran for the table. It offered a sparkling view of the lake and surrounding woods, the conical Tower roof perched on top of the trees like a black party hat.

Daniel was already there when we arrived, wheeling the chalkboard out from an odd little spear closet wedged between a bookshelf and the noseless bust of Homer at the end of the room. We both said, “Good morning, Daniel,” at the same time, which made me laugh, Fatin just smiled. 

He looked up from the blackboard. “Fatin,” he said. “Leah. Lovely to have you both back. Pleased with casting?”

“Absolutely,” Fatin said, but the tone of her voice confused me. Who would be disappointed to be playing Brutus? Then I remembered her comment from two nights previous, about wanting a little more variety on her résumé.

“When’s our first rehearsal?” she asked.

“Sunday.” Daniel winked. “We thought we’d give you a week to settle back in.”

Because of their unsupervised residence in the Castle and their infamous penchant for overindulgence, the fourth-year theatre students were generally expected to throw some kind of kickoff party at the beginning of the year. We had planned it for Friday. Daniel and Gretchen and probably even Dean Holinshed knew about it but pretended not to.

Linh and Dot finally came in from the hall, and Fatin and I hurried to dump our things on the table. Linh and Dot sat on the smaller sofa, leaving the other for Toni and Nora to share. They no longer bothered to leave room for Shelby, who (endearingly, like a child excited for storytime) preferred to sit on the floor.

Daniel poured tea at the sideboard, so the room smelled, as it always did, of chalk and lemon and Ceylon. When he had filled eight cups—tea drinking in Daniel’s class was mandatory; honey was encouraged, but milk and sugar were contraband—he turned around and said, “Welcome back.” He twinkled down at us like a bookish little Santa Claus. “I enjoyed your auditions yesterday, and I am eager to work with you again this semester.” He passed the first teacup to Dot, who passed it to Linh, who passed it to Fatin, and so on until it ended up in Shelby’s hands.

“Fourth year. The year of the tragedy,” Daniel said, grandly, when the tea tray was empty and everyone had a cup and saucer. (Drinking tea from mugs, we were often reminded, was like drinking fine wine from a Solo cup.) “I will refrain from telling you to take the tragedies any more seriously than the comedies. In fact, one might argue that comedy must be deadly serious to the characters, or it is not funny for the audience. But that is a conversation for another time.” He took his own teacup off the tray, sipped delicately, and set it down again. Daniel had never had a desk or lectern and instead paced slowly back and forth in front of the blackboard as he taught. “This year, we will devote our attention to Shakespeare’s tragic plays. What might that course of study encompass, do you think?”

There was a brief pause before we began suggesting topics.

Fatin: “Source material.”

Nora: “Structure.”

Shelby: “Imagery.”

Dot: “Conflict, internal and external.”

Me: “Fate versus agency.”

Fatin: “The tragic hero.”

Linh: “The tragic villain.”

Daniel held up a hand to stop us. “Good. Yes,” he said. “All of those things. We will, of course, touch on each of these plays—Troilus and Cressida and other problem plays included—but naturally, we will begin with Julius Caesar. A question: Why is Caesar not a history play?”

Fatin was first to answer, “The history plays are confined to English history.”

“Indeed,” Daniel said and resumed his pacing. I sniffed, stirred my tea, and sat back in my chair to listen. “Most of the tragedies include some element of history, but what we choose to call ‘history’ plays, as Fatin has said, are truly English history plays and are all named after English monarchs. Why else? What makes Caesar first and foremost a tragedy?”

My classmates exchanged curious glances, unwilling to offer the first hypothesis and risk being wrong.

“Well,” I said, when nobody else spoke, my voice croaky as it always was, “by the end of the play most of the major characters are dead, but Rome is still standing.” I stopped, struggling to articulate the idea. “I think it’s more about people and less about politics. It’s definitely political but if you compare it to, I don’t know, the Henry VI cycle, where everybody’s just fighting over the throne, Caesar’s more personal. It’s about the characters and who they are, not just who’s in power.” I shrugged, unsure whether I’d managed to make any part of my point.

“Yes, I think Leah is onto something,” Daniel said. “Permit me to pose another question: What is more important, that Caesar is assassinated or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends?”

It was a rhetorical question, so no one replied. Daniel was watching me, I realized, with the proud, fatherly affection he usually reserved for Fatin—who gave me an encouraging smile when I glanced across the table.

“That,” Daniel said, “is where the tragedy is.” He looked around at all of us, hands folded behind his back, the midday sunlight glinting on his glasses. “So. Shall we begin?” He turned to the blackboard, took a piece of chalk from the tray, and began to write. “Act I, Scene 1. A street. We open with the tribunes and the commoners. What do you suppose is significant about that? The cobbler has a battle of wits with Flavius and Murellus, and upon further questioning introduces our eponymous hero-tyrant…”

We rummaged around in our bags to find notebooks and pens, and as Daniel carried on, we scribbled down almost his every word. The sun warmed my back and the bittersweet scent of black tea drifted up into my face. I stole small glances at my classmates as they wrote and listened and occasionally posed questions, struck by warmth in my chest, a feeling of belonging. How lucky I was to be sitting there. 


	8. Scene seven

Scene 7

The convocation was traditionally held in the gold-spangled music hall on the ninth of September, Leopold Dellecher’s birthday. (He’d moved north from Chicago and had the house built sometime in the 1850s. It wasn’t turned into a school until a half-century later when the upkeep proved to be too much for the rapidly shrinking Dellecher family.) Had old Leopold somehow evaded death, he would have been turning one hundred and eighty-seven. An enormous cake with exactly that many candles was waiting upstairs in the ballroom to be cut and distributed to students and staff following Dean Holinshed’s welcome speech.

We sat on the left side of the aisle, in the middle of a long row filled in by second-and third-years. The theatre students, always the loudest and most likely to laugh, sat behind the instrumental and choral music students (who kept mostly to themselves, apparently determined to perpetuate the stereotype that they were the most complacent and least approachable of the seven Dellecher disciplines). The dancers (a collection of underfed, swan-like creatures) sat behind us. On the opposite side of the aisle sat the studio art students (easily identified by their unorthodox hairstyles and clothing perpetually spattered with paint and plaster) Toni exchanged a look with one of them. (Martha Blackburn. She had a streak of blue in her hair and clothing covered in yellow and red paint. I knew very little about her, but she did seem kind), then you had the language students (who spoke almost exclusively in Greek and Latin to one another and sometimes to other people), and the philosophy students (who were by far the weirdest but also the most amusing, prone to treating every conversation as a social experiment and tossing off words like “hylozoism” and “compossibility” as if they were as easily comprehensible as “good morning”). The staff sat in a long line of chairs on the stage. Daniel and Gretchen perched side by side like an old married couple, conversing quietly with their neighbours. The convocation was one of the rare times that we all melted together, a sea of people in what we all knew as “Dellecher blue,” because nobody wanted to call it “peacock.” School colours were not, of course, mandatory, but nearly everyone was wearing the same blue sweater, with the coat of arms stitched above the left breast. A larger version of the family crest hung on a banner behind the podium—a white saltire on a blue field, a long gold key and a sharp black quill crossed like swords in the foreground. Below was the motto:  _ Per aspera ad astra _ . I’d heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was  _ Through the thorns, to the stars _ .

As always, it was one of the first things Holinshed said at convocation.

“Good evening, everyone.  _ Per aspera ad astra _ .” He had appeared on stage from the shadows of the wings, a spotlight on his face striking the rest of us into silence. “Another new year. To the first-years among you, I must simply say welcome, and that we are delighted to have you. To the second-, third-, and fourth-years, welcome back, and congratulations.” Holinshed was a strange man—tall but stooped, quiet but forceful. He had a large hooked nose, wispy copper hair, and little square glasses so thick that they magnified his eyes to three times their natural size. “If you are sitting in this room tonight,” he said, “it means you have been accepted into the esteemed Dellecher family. Here you will make many friends, and perhaps a few enemies. Do not let the latter prospect frighten you—if you haven’t made any enemies in life, you’ve been living too safely. And that is what I wish to discourage.” He paused, chewed on his words for a moment.

“He has fucked up a bit,” Toni muttered.

“Well, he has to recycle his speeches at least every four years,” I whispered. “Can you blame him?”

“At Dellecher, I encourage you to live boldly,” Holinshed continued. “Make art, make mistakes, and have no regrets. You have come to Dellecher because you prized something above money, above convention, above the kind of education that can be evaluated on a numeric scale. I do not hesitate to tell you that you are remarkable. However”—his expression darkened—“our expectations are adjusted to match your enormous potential. We expect you to be dedicated. We expect you to be determined. We expect you to dazzle us. And we do not like to be disappointed.” His words boomed through the hall and hung in the air like an odorous vapor, invisible but impossible to ignore. He let the unnatural quiet linger far too long, then abruptly leaned back from the podium and said, “Some of you have joined us at the end of an era, and when you leave you will be emerging into not only a new decade and a new century, but a new millennium. We plan to prepare you for it as best we can. The future is wide and wild and full of promise, but it is precarious, too. Seize on every opportunity that comes your way and cling to it, lest it be washed back out to sea.”

His gaze settled unmistakably on us, the seven fourth-year thespians.

“ _ There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” he said. “On such a full sea are we now afloat, / And we must take the current when it serves / Or lose our ventures _ . Ladies and gentlemen, never waste a moment.” Holinshed smiled dreamily, then checked his watch. “And on the subject of waste, there is an enormous cake upstairs that needs devouring. Goodnight.”

And he was gone from the stage before the audience could even begin to clap.


End file.
